


One Summer's Day

by Calesvol



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 02:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10548756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calesvol/pseuds/Calesvol
Summary: It's the summer before term. Leta and Newt spend it together.





	

( **Warning(s]** : PG]

 

* * *

 

 

It was sometimes hard to laugh with a mouth stuffed with straw and grainy cud, tangling into hair thick and black, or wavy and of a cinnamon hue. Eyes of a glassy sky and rustic earth met this way, in these quiet exchanges that shared more understanding than whole strings sentences ever could, yet...he liked her this way. She seemed freer, with the sunlight bronzing upon her smiling features whilst it added some color to his wry grins, he thinks—maybe he thought too much about those little things, but in the hayloft, in the dancing motes of upset dust, he doesn’t think he’d have it any other way. It’s summer on his mother’s farm, and Theseus is calling for them. The hippogriffs needed grooming and their tack polished, the elder of the two protested. This only coaxed the two teens to hide further within the mounds of hay.

 

“I don’t think he’ll find us up here. Not right away, at least,” Newt reasoned as he portioned crunchy straw upon his head like a top hat. His voice was subdued, but tactical despite the grin that seemed to bloom on his face every few words from the prospect of mischief.

 

“You afraid of a little challenge, Scamander?” Leta teased brightly, lucky her cornrows of dark chestnut hair amassed into a messy bun didn’t allow for much to get tangled. With so much straw in her friend’s hair, it was nearly blond. The thought made her giggle.

 

“Now, now—I wouldn’t say that. Just cautious, is all,” the older boy replied before hunkering down closer to Leta, inwardly glowing from such close proximity between them. Cornflower blue eyes darted as he emulated Lestrange, trying to remain as still as possible whilst the wooden ladder that led into the hayloft creaked soundly by the intervals of footfalls, both knowing who it was.

 

“Shh, quiet,” Leta warned as she pressed herself into Newt’s side, laying on their stomachs. Even in the balmy summer heat, the seventeen year old couldn’t find anything unpleasant between that which was radiant between them, the happy flush on his pale cheeks not entirely attributable to solely the late summer’s heat. At only a year younger, Leta seemed almost oblivious, but—perhaps it was simply for the best.

 

From their ground view of the hayloft, amid the rolling masses of straw, Theseus’ arrival was announced by a fitful bout of sneezing. For a man who lived on a farm, it certainly didn’t seem like that on occasion. “Newt, come on, ya bloody git! Mum’s callin’ us and I ain’t in the mood to hear her carping abou’ it,” Theseus groused rather petulantly, addressed the air as if they’d materialize from it.

 

Exchanging a look, with a gleeful cackle did Leta burst from the hay with Newt on her arm, a flurry of straw awakened as if by a gale in their wake. “Newt, now!” she goaded rather giddily, leaping through the open egress that allowed hay to be raked through, whooping as the pair plunged into the waiting haystack below. Like water were they submerged, Newt feeling his nose uncontrollably twitch with the urge to sneeze.

 

“Haha, we did it!” Leta crowed triumphantly as she burst from the pile not even a moment later, thick tresses having becoming loosed in the fall and being distractedly raked through with nimble fingers. Barely a second later did Newt emerge rather modestly, shaking the worst of the straw from his hair and gingerly plucking out what he could following their escape. “Did you see Theseus’ face? Because I didn’t. Too...blistery.” Pulling what she could into a knotted ponytail, she flopped on the pile with a contented sigh.

 

“I think—“ Newt was cut short by a sudden mouthful of straw bits, grimacing at the wiry, dry texture before scrapping off what he could with his fingers. “ _Ugh_ —I meant, I think he was too busy sneezing for us to properly tell.” Slowly, he articulated his limbs as comfortably as Leta had, movements soft and sure; the mark of someone who had raised so many a manner of beasts from a young age. The depression his body left in the haystack was no more shallow than Leta’s own, feeling restive, sleepy contentment drift over him.

 

“Oh, bollocks! Pity, too—I always did adore the faces Theseus’ made. Especially at pastries, of all things. Pastries! What a world it must be to despise pastries. Maybe that’s why he’s allergic,” Leta babbled like a summery brook, modulation becoming sleepy as the warm afternoon sun beamed gently on them, banishing away all traces of humidity and uncomfortable heat.

 

However, as the silence spanned so comfortably between them, their gazes trained on the sculling, fluffy clouds and their gray undersides in a sea of azure, something melancholy drifted over the pair of friends. It brooded over Leta heaviest, Newt turning his face to see Leta’s in profile whilst what appeared to be the faint shimmer of a tear accumulated in the corner of her eye. “Leta, what’s wrong?” Newt inquired softly, mouth just slightly ajar as what was sometimes his habit, eyes wide and waiting. Before he was wont to launch into some jabbering tirade, that was. The sort Leta adored.

 

Turning her head towards him, Leta smiled sadly, yet unaware of the shimmer in her inscrutably dark eyes. “Newt, promise me something,” she said in the lowest of whispers, huddling just slightly closer. Newt reciprocated it, hand twitching in a subconscious want to hold her own. “Please—promise me, no matter what happens, we’ll always be friends. _Promise me_.”

 

The sudden tone she took rattled the older wizard, the boy swallowing thickly and feeling a sick twist knot in his gut, cold and quivering and needling his insides, as if some supernatural force were rearranging them. Turning his gaze back towards the sky in a subconscious effort to calm himself, a slightly shaky breath was inhaled through his mouth. For some reason, her words dreadfully clouded the languid, hazy summer day. Leta, seen as an outcast in her family for being so familiar with a boy they saw as inferior, wasn’t normally known for being so foreboding. And yet, the reputation of her family preceded her. Hung a dark cloud over her head despite how relentlessly sunny she was through it over all their years of friendship.

 

Forlornly did Newt’s fingers delicately curl around Leta’s, a motion to reassure despite how words failed on his tongue in that moment. Leta’s face seemed to snap towards the gesture, barely relaxing as she then proceeded to draw half of herself on him in a tight embrasure, Newt flushing from the sudden proximity and influx of warmth. He hummed as he was partially blanketed by her warmth, feeling her breath against the pale column of his neck. Digits carded through her braided locks, whilst another drew soothing circles along her spine.

 

“I’m not going anywhere. Even after graduation, I won’t leave you, Leta. Promise,” the redhead murmured into her ear, blushing hotly as she nuzzled closely into his neck, the very sensation of tingling happily hazing his mind despite the dull, sharp throb of uncertainty brewing in his breast.

 

With these unspoken feelings alive in his skull, Newt allowed himself to sink, despite a forbidden phrase almost springing to the fore of his tongue. Wrestling it down, the boy allowed himself to sink into this quiet, pastoral feeling on his family’s farm instead of entertaining dark ideas to come.

 

For what dark days lay ahead, indeed.

 

“Thank you, Newt.”


End file.
